went to brunch and had a whole meal and 3 bloody marys and 2 glasses of wine and was handed a check for $11. i kid you not. i don't even know how to tip on that anymore so i left $50 on the bar? but then i stopped by another restaurant because i was hoping to catch the chef to talk business and ordered a pasta, but then dessert and then like 6 glasses of dessert wine showed up anyhow. i was handed a check for $20. what?! it's just ridiculous. so i had to leave some crazy money on that and i'm sure i spent 3 times more than had i just paid for what i'd ordered instead of tipping on all the free stuff i didn't, but that's life. it's actually lovely to be loved and appreciated as a regular at some of these places. i genuinely feel loved. it's better to be loved and have lost (the extra $) than to never have been loved at all, or something.

friday evening was a gorgeous night and i hadn't made plans (i've been sick all week and staying in). i went to whole foods, stacked up on groceries and then saw all the yankees jerseys on the train platform. and as if it were something i was fated to do, i thought, "i'm going to drop my food off and then i'm going to go to yankee stadium and get a ticket to the game." that was it. and it was done. i was getting off the train, all these guys were all, "you need a ticket?" and i did. so i said yes. and he whips out this computer printout, totally sketchy looking, but it was an amazing seat. easily worth $100 at season ticket prices. i offered $40. he wanted $60 but then told me i could have it for $40 because i was so beautiful. it was also 20 minutes into the game and he wasn't going to sell this thing to anyone else so whatever! i sit down and the guys are all, "so you bought our ticket!" they'd sold it for $20 but i still got a deal. these guys were hilarious and they bought me beer. when i said i'd just shown up by myself they looked at me like i was an alien. but the coolest alien EVER. they were in awe of a chick who goes out and does things by herself. IMAGINE THAT. when they found out i was single they were all shocked ("but your're so pretty!") and i think feeling bad for my uterus or something. i assured them i wasn't watching my biological clock and they seemed to feel better, but i'm not the hugest fan of people thinking that if you're single that you're somehow broken/lonely/desperate. what if i LIKE being single? what if i enjoy my own company? what if this is a choice?! but most importantly, when i started hollering for my boyfriend Cano, one of the dudes was like, "yeah, i see him hanging out in hoboken all the time." WHAT?! my baby goes out in hoboken?! so he told me what club and so naturally i'm going to stalk him there immediately. the guys in front of me went on a mission to try to beg for beer post 7th inning stretch. I went with them because i was desperate for beer too. no luck. yankees lost kind of miserably.

as i left to the sounds of sinatra's "new york, new york" en masse to the train, i see a lone dude dressed up as spiderman, playing the saxophone. george michael and then billie holiday both came on while my ipod was on shuffle, so, WIN.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

So I wrote something...

for one of my favorite sites on the internets: How I Fought Bedbugs And Won (i basically begged them for weeks and wore them down with my sheer persistence).

but then someone put it on digg, which is fun! and random! so digg it or whatever.

my first post at esquire should be up this week, will link to that too when it shows.

i can't stop watching this. i love it so much. "guess what i wear as a hat? a lentil"

this is the kind of shit i'm talking about. and we're supposed to have civilized dialog across the aisle when the people on the other side are this dense? that's hardcore willful igorance at best and pure trailer-park stupidity at its worst. these people can't be reasoned with, they can only be ignored, which leaves them all the time in the world to run around willy nilly starting new rumors and spreading libelous emails.

when obama came out in favor of the mosque (though he sort of backtracked, not really) i said, "way to be a grownup." that's the RIGHT answer. then morons like dean come out and make things worse. they should be backing a brother up!

and so help me if i hear one more poll about whether losers on the street think X or Y is constitutional without the person reporting the story actually SAYING, "your'e wrong, it is constitutional, there are actual guidelines here, there's this thing called the supreme court, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW IS NOT A MATTER OF PUBLIC OPINION."

just had a fantastic dinner at agua dulce. sat at a sidewalk table and saw now less than three people i knew walking down the street. can i be the unofficial mayor of hell's kitchen? anyway: the restaurant. stay away from their frozen mojitos which are whack (made with creme de menthe instead of real mint) but the food rocks. get the salmon ceviche. and the chef has eyes you just want to gaze into for a long time so do that too.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

linkdump, hypocrites, mourning an inanimate object

April 2, 2010 Panic about the novel is set to low simmer. The next novel and the non-fiction book proposal aren't flying, they're flunking. Anxiety is causing my fingernails to reverse course and grow inward. What if You Lost Me There is perceived to be a bomb, would it be so bad? Playing around today, I figured out that Michiko Kakutani is an anagram for "Atomic Haiku Kink." Michiko alone becomes, "Hi I Mock."

someone commented that i should be writing about politics more. lately, even thinking about it is infuriating. listening to commentary even on the radio makes me want to pull all my hair out and then cut someone. i literally heard someone say (probably on fox news, which of course went unchallenged), regarding repealing the 14th amendment, "i don't think the founding fathers wanted people who weren't born here to be citizens." really?! you know what the founding fathers were? PEOPLE FROM ENGLAND. and those 14th amendment whackos somehow think that repealing the 14th amt would cause obama to no longer be a citizen because they refuse to acknowledge that he was even born here to begin with. and this WTC mosque that isn't even a mosque but a community center, that had been proposed ages before 9/11 and nobody had a problem with it then AND it's not even in the WTC, it's blocks away, near some dirty video store. and what makes me even crazier are that all these republicans speaking for the "9/11 families" when a lot of 9/11 families actually understand freedom of religion and acceptance of others and that, you know, not ALL muslims are terrorists...that those republicans are the same people that are all, "get out of my business, leave me alone" but "i'll get all up in your business and command the government to get involved in private business decisions when it suits me." so it's all just tremendously hypocritical. republicans are hypocritical. there. i said it. and they make me so angry.

but anger isn't something i'm allowed to feel if i want to be buddhist so i gotta learn to calm the fuck down. i got a good lesson in buddhism the other day. being attached to material things is suffering. so when i lost my $400 sunglasses, i actually felt pain. i was so sick to my stomach that i thought i might faint. and then i proceeded to have nightmares about losing said sunglasses all night. so fine, it's just an object. but the thing is that i don't lose things. ever. i've never lost a purse, a phone, a wallet. if anything, i misplace things within my own bedroom. so it was more stunning than anything else. the sunglasses had been in my bag and then they weren't. i have no idea where they went to, whether someone stole them out of my bag, whether they fell, etc. things like this don't happen to me, that is, until they do.

so yeah, attachment to physical things: suffering. i get it.

met an adorable girl today to makes these awesome raw food wraps and sells them in midtown.

i've got this irritating cough that i'm trying to steam out of my system. made a super spicy ramen. trying to scare the cold away, i suppose.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

buddhism, joseph gordon-levitt, sufjan, you lost me there

they're not accounting for the fact that people become BETTER LOOKING after acquiring said iphone. also, don't those numbers seem a little low? no? maybe?

have been on a few dates with someone who is buddhist and learning more about it is kind of rocking my world. it just makes so much sense, is resonating with me completely. some parts are a bit out there for me but the basic idea that we all should be good to each other, to anticipate each others needs, to be grateful for the life we have to to be thankful for every new day that we wake up in the morning. it's so beautiful. IMAGINE if everyone was buddhist!--i don't know enough about the religion to know what the bad parts of it are (if there are any) so chime in if you've got something to share--but it seems like the world would be such a lovely place if everyone were buddhist. SO PEACEFUL! also, they're supposed to be vegetarians (it's bad if you kill things) but this game is like going down a rabbit hole. even killing a plant kills insects, etc., but the point is that we should all be aware of what we're eating, considerate of where it came from. sounds like a good idea right? might promote more healthy eating.

a tenet of buddhism is "do no evil" which reminds me of google's mission statement: don't be evil, which reminds me that this deal they've made with verizon regarding net neutrality....doesn't seem awesome. actually seems possibly evil. just sayin'

the love of my life, no, not robinson cano. not jon stewart. no, not sufjan stevens, the other one. joseph gordon-levitt made a short film dealie which i just think is charming beyond belief. the language, OH, the language. i'm in love with a whole new set of words! produced by this thingy: hitrecord.org. anyway, watch it and laze in its awesomeness.

speaking of sufjan! presale tickets when on sale for his november concerts in nyc. i had 4 in my cart and then CHOSE not to buy them! what?! i know! but i can't help thinking that i'll probably be in nicaragua by then. the more i think about the possibility i won't go, the more i hate the idea of not going. so maybe, if no other commitments come up (like having to live in a chicago museum for a month), i'll go from mid september to mid october or mid november.

my friend rosecrans baldwin has published a book that, though i haven't read it, is being gushed over by like every media outlet ever (his press rep deserves some kind of bonus, for sure). so BUY IT. i promise you'll enjoy it. i'm so excited!

i may also be doing some writing. i'll link my posts when they run. i've got two on the burners and have more pitching to do. the stuff i've got so far are interviews which actually require less writing and more a skill for having a conversation with somebody but who cares! i'm all about it!

Sunday, August 08, 2010

inspiring summer

amazing bits of things have been happening in my life and i'm a little bit in awe of just life itself. that sounds crazy. i'm sorry. but it's true.

i had the honor of showing around some friends from home for the past couple days, which is really just an excuse to go to all of my favorite places in a 48 hour time span. they loved my restaurants and my dive bars. we stopped by my ultimate favorite favorite place in the city for a glass of wine and made friends with the bartender, got offered gratis macarons and learned about a super secret supper club from a dude sitting next to us at the bar.

on the way home i had some drycleaning and my purse and i'd sat down next to a girl and my stuff was kind of all over her and as i apologized she looks at me with a pained expression and asks if she can ask me something personal. "sure," i say. she responds, "can you see any hickies on my boob? how about here on my neck? and on the other side of my neck? oh my god, my mom is gonna kill me." i burst out laughing. i hand her some visine which, maybe it's an old wive's tale, but i've been told it disperses blood vessels so i tell her to put some on her welts. the ones on her neck weren't bad but she had her concealer out. what was bad were the scratches all over her back. "but we were only making out! we like didn't even do anything!" she wails. she's 17, she's gay, has told her mother but so far it's not something they've discussed. so while i'm all, "you're 17, high schoolers date! it's fine!" she's all, "but i was making out with a girl! so that's bad! at least for my mom!" sweet thing. she'd just come back from tanzania, so we talked about africa. i said, "the thing about the people in africa is that they were all so poor, they had nothing but they were so," "happy," she says, finishing my sentence. YES. i did my best to try to convince her that there were bigger problems than a hicky in this life and to not freak out completely. such a random, only in new york, thing.